Friday, October 25, 2013

A future in Jeopardy

So, as I may have told some or all of you, I've been called to be a contestant on an upcoming episode of Jeopardy!, and my brainpower and time since then has been pretty much all taken up with trying to fill every spare nook and cranny of my brain's synapses with quiz show trivia.

(If you knew how much of it was already composed purely of quiz show trivia beforehand, this should impress and disturb you.)

Apologies to everyone to whom I promised regular updates about the voiceover and performance world, but it's rare that you get the chance to do a half-hour performance that might net you well over $10,000. (Well, rare for me. I'm sure Jennifer Hale is used to it.)

A quick update on what my life has been like: I have obsessively scoured Wikipedia and created complete sets of flashcards on the following topics:

US Presidents, Vice Presidents, losers in presidential elections
The 50 US states, their capitals, their borders and their nicknames
Canada -- provinces, capitals and recent PMs
A list of significant Popes
The British monarchy
Major American wars -- leaders and battles
Seas of the world

Things I have not yet covered but intend to:

Classical musicians of the past 300 years
Popular musicians of the past 70 years (Billboard's #1 hits)
Oscar winners, Best Actor and Best Picture
English-language poets and novelists of the past 300 years
The dreaded opera category
Potent Potables (cocktail recipes)
Mountain ranges and tallest mountains of the world
Rivers and lakes of the world
Archipelagoes and islands of the world
Waterfalls
Nobel Prize winners and their biographies
The periodic table of elements
Major Linnaean categories of living organisms

This is based on research of what categories come up more often in Jeopardy than others, as well as some self-analysis of what I could stand to know more about. I've also been practicing the game theory of Final Jeopardy wagering and standing in front of a monitor playing YouTube videos of Jeopardy games clicking a pen like it's a buzzer.

This has not been good for my health or my relationships, but hopefully it will be all worth it to come within a hairsbreadth of winning, blow the Final Jeopardy question and come home humiliated with $1,000 and a renewed incentive to stop wasting time on Wikipedia and watching game shows and focus on my voiceover career instead.

In the meantime, here's a video from 2012 of me voicing a promo for sous-vide cooking:

1 comment:

Est-ce que tu parles français? I was annoyed by Alex (from "bilingual" Canada) who miscorrected your pronunciation of the word "niche" I'm just a less-than-casual follower of Jeopardy who's now taping the show because of your remarkable performance. Vive Arthur!